Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.– David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

CT. Murphy/McMahon: “[Rep. Chris Murphy] D has been struggling. In a state where Ds have a 16-point voter registration advantage over Republicans and where Obama won by 23 points in 2008, recent polls suggest the race [against WWF executive Linda McMahon R] is a dead heat.” … Murphy/McMahon: “R Linda McMahon, a businesswoman who has never held elective office, believes tax cuts and reducing government regulations will spark economic growth. Her opponent, three-term congressman Chris Murphy, would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans while at the same time investing in manufacturing and education.”

FL. Class warfare: “A St. Augustine cancer patient on Medicaid arrived at a local medical facility last week for her regular chemotherapy appointment but was told she’d been switched without notice from a Medicaid HMO called MediPass to a new Medicaid HMO called StayWell. According to [state Agency for Health Care Administration] Press Secretary Shelisha Coleman, information about StayWell providers can be found on the ACHA website, which is updated twice a year. When reminded that many Medicaid patients are poor and may not have computers, Coleman said she’d supply a ‘provider finder tool’ that could be published so patients can contact the company directly.”

IL. Voting: “[T]he Chicago Board of Election Commissioners ‘cautiously optimistic’ that the city will exceed its number of early votes from 2008. Many early voting centers are open Monday through Saturday, and a handful offer Sunday hours.” Whatever reinforces the duopoly!

MN. Ellison/Fields (debate): “A live radio debate between D U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison and his R challenger, Chris Fields, in the Fifth Congressional District race turned nasty this morning, with the two candidates trading accusations and insults and Ellison calling Fields a ‘lowlife scumbag.’”

PA. Uranium: “[In Apollo, PA] many residents suffered serious illnesses from the uranium fuel plants located in and close to the village. Babcock & Wilcox and ARCO (the previous owner) were forced to pay $80 million to compensate victims for cancers and loss of property value. Now scores of new lawsuits have been filed against [them, following a] damning report to the federal court that states that [they] about ‘worst-in-the-nation releases of radioactive materials that spanned decades’ but didn’t do much to protect the health of the residents.” …. Legacy parties: “Of the 203 state House races, 96 are unopposed. Nine of 25 are unopposed in state Senate races. In both cases, the majority running unopposed are incumbents.” …. Fracking: “Chesapeake Energy has a permit to frack just one mile from the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport. Whether that is cause for alarm, experts can’t say.”

WI. Voting: “But the lesser-known change that could have the greatest effect voters is a ban on ‘corroboration’ – the practice of allowing new or recently relocated voters to establish residency in a ward and register to vote by having someone vouch for them if they lack an acceptable document that shows their address. Because of tough economic conditions, many people need to re-register to vote after moving out of houses and into apartments or into homes of family members.”

The trail. The economy: “The challenger asks ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’ The incumbent has been rephrasing the question to ask ‘Are you better off now than you were last year?’If you can discern which answer voters think is more important, then you can likely figure out what the outcome of the Presidential election will be.” … The economy: “The challenger asks ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’ The incumbent has been rephrasing the question to ask ‘Are you better off now than you were last year?’If you can discern which answer voters think is more important, then you can likely figure out what the outcome of the Presidential election will be.” …

Grand Bargain™-brand Catfood Watch. Clinton hagriographyt: “Joel Johnson believes Clinton could help Obama (assuming he wins) with a renewed pursuit of a grand bargain on entitlements and taxes as Washington grapples right after the election with the so-called fiscal cliff.” How does “not one penny of cuts and any savings to beneficiaries” sound? Think Clinton can — or would — put that over? … Payroll tax: “Some Ds in Congress are seeking to include an extension of the $120bn payroll tax cut in negotiations over the looming ‘fiscal cliff,’ shaking what had appeared to be a bipartisan consensus to allow the measure to expire as planned at the end of the year.” … Accelerated regular order: “Expecting a procedural device to do the hard work of securing bipartisan agreement may be asking too much of Congress’s procedural tool kit in a period of divided and split party control.”

Green Party. Jill Stein: “Jailing and censuring people because you don’t want them heard from is really not good strategy. It did not work with Martin Luther King or Gandhi. It is not going to work with Jill Stein.”

The Obama. Freudian slip? “[BIDEN: ] How many of you know someone who served in Iraq or Iran?’ How many of you know someone who has been injured or lost in Iraq or Iran?” … Iran: “If I were Obama, during Monday’s debate I’d heartily embrace the idea of bilateral negotiations.” … Iran: “The Iranian regime seems to have a rooting interest in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, according to a review of online writers and bloggers in Iran.” FOX, bien sur. … Hmm: “‘You expect your family to give you the benefit of the doubt,’ [Mellody Hobson, an Obama fund-raiser] said.” … Money: Obama campaign takes out $15 million loan from BoA.

* Slogan of the day: Long Live The Victory of The Revolutionary Cultural Line of The Romney!

About Lambert Strether

Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration 24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume “Lambert Strether” comes from Henry James’s The Ambassadors: “Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to.” You can follow him on Twitter at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com

86 comments

Stuttgart, closely associated with Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Bosch, LBBW, EnBW, Uni Stuttgart, in other words with a cluster of what makes German industry second to none, just elected Fritz Kuhn of the Greens mayor:

I don’t know. The German Bundnis 90/Die Grünen, often simply referred to as the Greens, is a political party as defined by German law and established in the German Grundgesetz, effectively the constitution. It’s the party that shared federal power with the SPD under Gerhard Schroeder from 98 – 04(?) and that for the last decade or so has attracted about 10% of the electorate. Kuhn won in Stuttgart with 53% after taking the mainstream/conservative position on the biggest issue in the city – the re-construction of the main train station. Sounds trivial but it has become a huge issue with a multi-billion Euro price tag. Many greens are opposed to the re-construction but when it was put to a plebiscite recently the majority voted for re-construction and Kuhn accepted the result as the final word. Kuhn also denied that as mayor he would try to introduce an entry-toll for vehicles entering the city a al London, Stockholm, Singapore. IMO he should introduce it but the benefits of Green leadership in city hall will be enjoyed in other ways.

The problem in the US is Duverger’s Law. Third parties get desperate and weird, because they are continuously shut out.

Germany has party-proportional represenation, so third parties have a real chance, and behave as you might expect given that.

Here, as in the UK and France, third parties need to be single-issue parties, and the single issue needs to be party-proportional representation.

The LibDems could not get the Labour/Tory duopoly to even allow a referendum on party-proportional representation in the UK, hence their continuing failure.

Here in the US, most third parties don’t even know what party-proportional representiation *is*, so we’re even worse off. They’re chasing after chimeras like “instant runoff voting” (which won’t help; see Australia).

Yes! Wonderful to read your comment! I feel like I’ve met a long lost friend in the wilderness! Duvenger’s Law! The cause of the US’s terminal uniqueness.

To supplement your comment on the UK – the Lib Dems didn’t get the Tories to agree to a plebiscite on party proportional
voting. They compromised and the plebiscite was on something like “additional voting”, I can’t remember the exact term, which was a tweek to the current SMDP system in the UK and which the Lib Dems lost.

President (for life?) Weed looses Diego Garcia and calls it quits. Without his B-52s, and the ability to pound into submission those who need to be pounded into submission, he feels helpless, so much so, he does the unthinkable, he makes a command decision to negotiate.

Sorry, not buying the scenario. Fearless and patriotic (aka: psychotic) Pentagon generals, admirals, their staffs, their cooks, the cloak and dagger analysts from Langley, Hillary, Billary, et al, would gut Weed, right there in the Oval Office, before they would allow him to show even the slightest hint of weakness.

“Make one kowtowing movement and we’ll kill you Mr. President.”

Note I: It is important to remember that Kennedy was, more often than not, the only sane man in the room during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It is also important to recall that Kennedy got lucky. A whole series of things went improbably right in late October of 62, otherwise, Kennedy would have been forced to pull the trigger, because the Death of a Planet weighs far less on a Great Leader’s scale than his ballsack.

Note II: There is a reason why in Ought Two we scrapped the 72 ABM Treaty, and ever since have been surrounding China (and Russia also) with first strike missile systems, (it’s not like we’re doing it on a whim –just dusted off the old master plan is all).

It’s because we are fully aware that China is going to whup our ass from here on out, in every conceivable struggle there is, but the Big One.

Not his best post. The big problem with it is that he is acting like he believes what she said. IMO, that’s the fatal flaw. When politicians say, in one form or another, that they didn’t know about something or were not aware of something the first rule of filtering/interpretation is to assume they are lying. Of course if it is something obscure (like the details of a complicated bill that nobody actually reads), they may actually not know, but in this case that does not apply.

As a general rule, I assume anything said by a politician or gov’t official is questionable truth at best. I always ask myself things like… what is their motivation for saying such-and-such? who does it benefit? who does it attack? and then I try to determine what small bits might possibly be the truth, or little truths strung together in a way that ends up to be a bigger lie. However, I often find their lies more useful in terms of trying to understand the underlying game playing.

I hadn’t bothered reading that far into the comments, but I found his comment and he says “But I think she should be taken at her word.” WTF? She is a politician and therefore should almost never be taken at her word. Obviously Glenn & I differ on this very basic assessment of political reality. I have always respected Glenn’s work, but he’s gone down a notch with this statement.

Of course another tack to take is to take them at their word and simply point out that if they didn’t know something that someone in their position damn well should have known, then may be they are unfit for that position …

Incompetence or complicity – at the end of the day, does it really matter – it is actionable either way, in the case of the former removal from the position, in the latter removal plus possibly indictment – but removal none the less …

I have observed that my friends who are the most partisan (and they are all liberal Dems) are the ones most likely to believe what politicians say, and get the most pleasure from complaining about it in a self-righteous way. They will say to me on the phone something like ‘so-and-so politician just said so-and-so’ and then start going off on it, and my response is always… why do believe them? why are you wasting your time and energy getting all emotionally involved with MSM news bits like that?

However I do understand that many people enjoy the drama of politics. IMO, it’s very similar to why people like soap operas or supporting their favorite sports teams. One of my friends is a lawyer and passionate Democrat, and one time when I told him I didn’t think very highly of the rah-rah pro-wrestling aspect of politics, he smiled and said that was his favorite part… and we both laughed about it. To each their own, vive la difference!

Aquifer, I LOVE the imagery of that and am storing away your comment in my notes… very insightful!

I came across this today while surfing off of commenters at the Archrduids blog… and I think he makes some great points here.

If You Want To Occupy, Then Practice Abandonment http://sixgreywings.blogspot.com/2012/10/if-you-want-to-occupy-then-practice.htmlDisconnecting from contemporary consumer culture is not enough, of course. The void has to be filled with something, and it can’t just be another sub-culture that has an easily marketed identity. Each person involved in the movement really has to look inward individually and see what sort of culture that they want to build rather than imitate or have handed to them. That culture cannot be built solely in opposition to anything, but must be founded on what they value instead.

And isn’t it perhaps more interesting still that such a marriage, unlike all others, is incapable of producing “legitimate” offspring, but bastards only ….. yeah, one could riff on that idea for awhile, i suppose …..

Thanx for that quote at the bottom – i agree wholeheartedly. There must be more than a culture of “No”, there must be a “Yes” to something, and that being the case, we need to pay attention to what we say “Yes” to .. Man, i have learned that the hard way over the years ….

I guess it would take a duncer person than i not to figure out by now that you think visually – do you draw cartoons and stuff? i would give my eyeteeth to be able to draw, can’t even do stick figures well :) A picture is worth a thousand words. It is too bad there isn’t a way for folks so inclined to include such stuff here …..

Yes, I agree that one should be wary of what politicians say. Reuters used to have a “Guidebook for all reporters”, covering dozens of pages. One guidance piece of advice on sources (in practically any imaginable role/capacity ) went like this:
“Sources have or may have their own reasons for speaking to you.” [ you meaning a reporter or journalist working on some assignment].

Watch the video with the sound turned off and watch her face. She shows genuine confusion, followed by disbelief and incredulity, and then backs and turns away with disdain. Showing this many emotions, this quickly, and this realistically – you would be hard-pressed to find an actor on television that skilled. And actors get multiple takes to get it right.

The apparent confusion could be because she was caught off guard by the question and wasn’t quick enough to figure out how to spontaneously spin the answer. She is smart enough to know that if she sputtered out something relevant and botched it, it could go viral and be used against the President or the party somehow (many politicos fear this). Really, when the Bush folks like Gonzales said they didn’t know or weren’t aware of something, most people were smart enough not to believe that.

Can Democratic leaders possibly be just plain ignorant? Yes. From 2001

New Intelligence Chairman Clueless on Terrorism

CQ National Security Editor Jeff Stein interviews incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes [Democrat] on his views about major terrorist groups. It turns out he has no clue whether al Qaeda is Sunni or Shiite and has apparently never heard of Hezbollah.

Agreed that there is much cluelessness amongst the congress critters. Therefore it can be very difficult to tell whether it’s ignorance or spinning/party-line or outright lying in any given case. In the DWS case, I think she’s lying and others think she’s being truthful… but who knows? Either way I think we all agree she’s a toady politician.

I looked into the “About us” section of The Guardian, which started off in Manchester, UK and has been left-wing by their own account. I read that as recently as the 1990’s the Guardian successfully fought off a libel case brought by a British high-placed politician.

I don’t know where “libel” begins in UK law. Anyway, I’m suggesting that maybe an Editor at the Guardian could have been wary of writing something too close to suggesting or quasi-implying misleading/lying/deceit by Ms. W. …

So, I have more stuff. In the Telegraph this year, novelist Amanda Craig wrote about her terrible time with getting a novel published because a litterary critic whom she had been acquainted with bore some “resemblance” (20% him, 80% other men …) to a character in her novel.

It is for real. Click on the “Presidential Debate” link for more info.

FYI: The Republicans and Democrates have apparently signed an agreement with the Presidential Debate Commission (PDC) (which they formed after they found that they couldn’t push around The League of Women Voters) which restricts them to only attending PDC debates.

Maybe Clint Eastwood will show up with a chair and speak for Robama. That would pull in some viewers.

bowhahaha.

good stuff Jackrabbit, thanks for being on top of this over past view days. You are very correct overall about the topic.

For me, it’s the Ouija Board if there’s a question I have about what a politician stands for. I’ve learned not to believe what they say or write. Mostly. And if there’s a question of philosophical weight, then I ditch the Ouija Board and I ask the trees. They don’t lie.

I left this comment on business insider in response to one of the all-too numerous fools who run around screaming how we cannot recreate our national greatness because we are broke! Broke! Broke!

Here it is:

The reason inflation occurs is that demand outstrips supply. If you are claiming that there isn’t enough food, shelter, or other goods and services available to soak up the demand that would be created if, say the government provided free healthcare to every citizen, thus freeing up trillions a year for people to spend on other goods, then there should be SOME inflation of SOME goods. The idea that stimulus of any form, or freeing government of debt by canceling some of its debt, is inherently inflationary is simply false. The reason people keep bringing up god and the bible is that the bible, and many other historical texts, discuss the topic of the “debt jubilee”. You see, it turns out that the ancient world actually had a better grasp on the dynamics of debt and interest compounding (its amazing what people can come up with when there aren’t neoliberal ignoramuses running constant propaganda), and understood that debt and interest, on a cyclical basis, would freeze up an economy as it became too great a share of actual economic activity. In other words, once so much money was going to pay debt service that there wasn’t enough left over for real economic activity, economies would begin to grind to a halt. A debt jubilee was the answer then, and its the answer now. In effect its a global reset for a currency area, and it frees up demand and allows an economy to rejuvenate. The bogeyman of inflation you and so many others constantly trot out as if you know anything beyond your ridiculously blinkered “experience”, is just another version of being “crucified on a cross of gold”. We will not be returning to the gold standard for the same reason your inflation fears are unfounded: artificially limiting the money supply, whether by a gold standard or inflation fears, amounts to the same thing: grinding deflation, economic stagnation and needless suffering. Since there is enough, in our age of plenty, to feed, clothe, house, educate and care for all of the people in our nation, the fear of inflation is plainly false, and amounts to rank, medieval superstition, is immoral in the extreme as it causes artificial scarcity, poverty and death. The one area where demand can truly outstrip supply is in energy, and that is why we need a national effort, on the level of the space program in the 1960s that brought us to the moon, to massively invest in all the renewable forms of energy production, including wind, solar, geothermal (a massive unused and infinitely renewable source), and anything else our technology can make work for us. If the US invested its true wealth, which is the limitless imagination of its people, in such an effort, we could transform our society in 10 years to be unrecognizable from an energy use standpoint. The ONLY THING holding us back is people like you who sit on your butt crying that we are broke! It would be funny if it wasn’t so damned tragic. By your logic the New Deal couldn’t happen, our massive national infrastructure that we built in the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam and the other marvels of the modern world (our electric grid, etc.) would never have been built, and we wouldn’t have fought in WWII because we “didn’t have the money”. The idea that we are limited by mere money from achieving greatness is the true crucifixion on a cross of gold that people like you would impose on the rest of us, so we slide back into a new dark age.

The small mindedness of it all is what shocks me. We didn’t become the nation we are through small minded thinking, or by limiting ourselves to what the private sector will invest in. The interstate highway system would never have been built by the private sector. Nor would our incredible educational system, our electricity grid and other massive infrastructure projects. Our greatness was the product of expansive minds that focused on getting things done, not on the dogmatic limitations you would impose. Our greatness comes from the combination of private AND public to make the impossible possible. Wake up and see the future.

Stein and Honkala weren’t arrested because they weren’t wanted to be heard. They were arrested for trespassing. It was just a publicity stunt, because the Greens are nothing but a bunch of attention whores. If they had actually been building a party, doing the unglamorous work of winning small local/statehouse races for a couple of years, instead of blowing all their resources over and over again Quixotically shooting for the big one as if they had a chance, they might actually be at the point by now where someone, somewhere, would take them seriously. They’re in the privileged white middle-class purgatory of trying (but failing) to grab headlines and four seconds on the nightly news, as a form of moralistic validation. They don’t want to win… they want to be right in defeat.

Well I for one am thankful. They reminded me of the debate corporation owned by D vs R’s which kept two fine women on the final ballot not only in a binder but actual handcuffs for 8 hours… out of most cowardly fear of what the women would say about how they would represent. It’s no wonder this debate corporation was initiated because both parties put the league of women voters in a binder rather than insist upon a fair debate format some years back.

And you have the audacity, the very small mind, to call Jill and Cheri attention whores. You obviously did not see video of their action… how calm they were. There should be NO excuse for arresting them…much more excluding them from the hall itself or the debate.

Std boiler plate anti Green stuff – sigh, why is it necessary to have to explain, pretending i believe you don’t know? Because others might not, so …

They weren’t arrested for trespassing they were arrested for “obstructing traffic” on a dormant street. The funny part is the ones “obstructing traffic” were the cops all around them – the two of them are small enough that cars could just drive around them! They weren’t obstructing anything but to have left them out there would have meant they might have attracted more supporters and more media – can’t risk that …. And then they were taken to a warehouse and handcuffed to chairs for 8 hours, but i suspect that’s perfectly fine in your book ….

As for the value of running on a national level, besides the obvious one of performing the public service of giving us folks actually worth voting for – if they can get to the magic 5% level they will have automatic ballot status in a number of places and so can do just what you suggest – spend more resources on outreach and not have to spend so much just to get on the ballot jumping through hoops and meeting requirements the duopoly never has to. In case you weren’t aware, non-corporate 3rd parties have the same problems on a local level as they do on a national one …. They have been doing “unglamorous” work at the local level for some time …

This image of the “most powerful country in the world” feeling compelled to handcuff 2 women, legitimate candidates for the highest office in the land, to a chair for 8 hours, for doing nothing more than attempting to participate in the officially sanctioned debates for candidates of that office is damning indeed. And even if you want to argue they committed the “crime” of obstructing traffic – is being handcuff to a chair for 8 hours a legitimate course of action in the “civilized” country we claim to be?

But i am not supporting these gals/guys as “a protest” , or to “raise issues”, or as a “conscience” vote, or to beat the “other guy” – I am supporting them for the reason i think all of us should support our choices, because i think they are the best candidates and i want them to win ….

And, in any case, in the end, is it better to be right in defeat or wrong in victory ….

I had the Lions as my sleeper team last year and they made me a tidy sum over the course if the year. But this year yikes! Then again at least you’re not a Jets fan like me. Horrific QB & a blowhard for a coach.

A rich 12 year old in the 18th century would be happy with a toy horse made of wood. Today, a 12 year old kid would not be happy with just that. But 200 years from now, no 12 yr old kid would be happy with the junk stuff that would make today’s 12 year olds ecstatic.

Thus, iPads, Super Bowl victories and becoming a member of the 0.01% all bring relative happiness.

Absolute happiness has nothing to do with creating victims and is timeless – like having a baby, quenching one’s thirst, etc.

With absolute happiness, equality is inherent. With relative happiness, we must make sure it’s equal for everyone.

“Today, the neighborhood is dominated by University. During the mid 1900s, the neighborhood was characterized by young families and pick up baseball games rather than college house parties. It was the greatest place in the world to grow up.

What contributed to that was the sort of superior cohesiveness of the neighborhood. Everybody knew everybody. Every mother in the neighborhood was partly my mother. You were free to roam the neighborhood all day long, but you had to be careful not to get into too much trouble because everyone would find out.

There was an enormous number of children. You didn’t have to call up for play dates like kids have to do these days. You would just go to people’s houses and play. It was the best elementary education in the world. We really got a high moral education out of school, Church and all the mothers.

We were so grateful to have a job. We welcomed days of richness because we lived through days of worry. It was like a family conference, and so today we have so many layers of administration that it’s not only difficult to communicate with the people who are making the highest decisions but you would hardly know them.

This loss of quality connection has also affected student ability. Often many students seem not to care about learning. For them it’s more about getting a job. They don’t seem to want to be changed by learning something. They’re happy with it [knowledge] out there. But heaven forbid that they should take that and make that a part of their own personality.

The teaching is just to fulfill professional obligation…But beyond that I don’t know that there is too much.”
————

“It’s the one place where Democrats and Republicans have been willing, even eager, to embrace the same ideas. For all the talk of bipartisanship, this signature effort (Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind on steroids; Goyal) has been an unmitigated disaster for American schools.” Wojcikiewicz

“Historically, the US has enjoyed higher social mobility than Europe, and both left and right have identified this economic openness as an essential source of the nation’s economic vigor. But several recent studies have shown that in America today it is harder to escape the social class of your birth than it is in Europe.

Today, we think of social mobility as a good thing. But if you are on top, mobility also means competition…Elites that have prospered from inclusive systems can be tempted to pull up the ladder they climbed to the top. Eventually, their societies become extractive and their economies languish.

Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society. Inclusive states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever greater inclusiveness.” Freeland

“A truly great business must have an enduring ‘moat’ that protects excellent returns on invested capital.” Buffet

“Most of the laboring class possesses property, cultivates their own lands, have families, and from the demand of their labor are enabled to extract from the rich…” Jefferson

“Which millionaire are you voting for? …In most elections, however, we don’t get a say in something important: whether we’re governed by the rich…But it’s still a choice between two Harvard educated millionaires,” Carnes

What’s up with the NY Times lately?

Spend 5 minutes at UVM and 10 in Burlington (or a year examining Ohio State’s tentacles). University is a government of, by and for itself, and it’s a rapacious dinosaur. When the US Navy eliminated its checks and balances, University destroyed this country’s work ethic, by design.

The admirals thought they were going to sail off on the Internet, which is now their prison. Careful when you steal, because once in a while it is in labor’s interest to set an example, a marker, rather than make pie.

Can’t wait to see JPM’s latest and greatest solution in practice…

“I die before my time and my body shall be given back to the earth and devoured by worms. What an abysmal gulf between my deep miseries and the eternal kingdom of Christ. I marvel at whereas the ambitious dreams of myself and of Alexander and of Caesar should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant- Jesus- should be able to stretch his hands across the centuries and control the destinies of men and nations.” Napoleon

The path to God is self-examination, which is the point of the Bible. A female that does not raise her children to be Men and Women will treat men like boys, because of her biology. The eunuchs breed these females as gatekeepers, to pull up the ladder. You can’t take the empire personally and expect to learn. Napoleons are a dime a dozen.

To find yourself, sample time. Go where you must to develop new skills, and observe empire response to your presence. God is what you don’t see, except in the kindness of strangers, timed to make your bridge.

As an intelligent laborer, you are always in a position to decide if the consumers consume themselves to death. Relative to time, they are robots, paid for make-work, with job credit. You can produce; they cannot. Make pie. Give away half. Observe the production line and the consumption line. You don’t need a slide rule to differentiate producers; the empire does it for you. The majority is always net consumers. That’s democracy.

Reprieve makes the Mail, awesome! International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda wants the Security Council to refer charges [such as Pakistan’s drone murder charges] to the ICC. Of course, any country in the world can prosecute our drone murderers, since the ICC does nothing but universal-jurisdiction law.

Hey President Double-tap. Enjoy your life as a fugitive elder statesman. Plenty of time to take exotic vacations in, uh, Myrtle Beach, they won’t issue warrants for you there, right? Or Amish Country! Funnnel cakes are yummy!

The article on republican voter supression, wow, frightenning.
Unless the polls shift dramatically in the next few weeks, you guys are going to get a sh*tstrom that’ll make the Florida 2000 fiasco look like a picnic.

The Foreign Policy article is flawed right from the first paragraph. The author completely fails to realize that the Canadians’ current superior net worth is almost entirely owing to inflated home valuations, as Canada still has a real estate bubble.

/”Wheatley has made a promise to the banks similar to these BOE promises. This is the unintentionally hilarious first sentence of a press report on Wheatley’s October 16, 2012 “warning” to the City of London’s financial firms.

/The City was warned today that while the new regulator will visit financial companies less frequently than before, it will come down on them fast should they misbehave.”//

//Last week, Panetta addressed the Business Executives for National Security, an organization devoted to creating a robust public-private partnership in matters of national security. Standing inside the Intrepid, New York’s retired aircraft-carrier-cum-military-museum, he offered a hair-raising warning about an imminent and devastating cyber strike at the sinews of American life and wellbeing.

/Yes, he did use that old alarm bell of a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” but for anyone interested in American civil liberties and rights, his truly chilling image was far more immediate. “A cyber attack perpetrated by nation states or violent extremist groups,” he predicted, “could be as destructive as the terrorist attack of 9/11.”

/Panetta is not the first Obama official to warn that the nation could be facing a cyber catastrophe, but he is the highest-ranking to resort to 9/11 imagery in doing so. Going out on a limb that previous cyber doomsayers had avoided, he mentioned September 11th four times in his speech, referring to our current vulnerabilities in cyber space as “a pre-9/11 moment.”//